CCTV cameras could be installed on every Budapest bridge after recent tragedies

Budapest’s assembly may debate as early as today a proposal to fit CCTV cameras on all Budapest bridges, aiming to avert tragedies. Proposer Dávid Vitézy, a former mayoral candidate, argues that preventing even one such incident would justify the measure. The idea surfaced after Mátyás Egressy, an 18-year-old Hungarian, vanished weeks ago, last seen by surveillance cameras walking onto the Chain Bridge.

No cameras on the bridges

Vitézy deems it insufficient that cameras exist only at the bridgeheads. In Egressy’s tragic disappearance, all that is known is that he ascended the bridge but never descended. Footage from a Danube vessel suggests he may have fallen from it in the early hours of Sunday.

Yet with no cameras on the span itself, this cannot be confirmed beyond doubt. Police continue the search regardless, though the rushing Danube renders it arduous; months may pass before certainty emerges on the grim vanishing.

Over the past 15 years, insists Vitézy, this is not the first such case of someone disappearing from a Budapest bridge, with no cameras to clarify events. He thus urges a uniform, modern, comprehensive camera network across every Danube crossing (seven in total), monitoring not just roadways but pavements too.

Bolstering public safety

Podmaniczky Movement leader Vitézy adds that street cameras exert a deterrent effect in themselves, bolstering public safety and enabling swifter, more effective probes into vanishings and mishaps.

The capital assembly holds authority here and could approve a timed rollout plan for the cameras at Wednesday’s session, reports Szeretlek Magyarország.

If you missed our previous articles:

• Mysteries mount in hunt for vanished Budapest teen
• Chilling parallels: Two young men vanish in Budapest 13 years apart
• What happens to your body if you fall into the icy, fast-flowing Danube from a Budapest bridge